History
As part of a network-wide rebrand, ITV1 London was formed on 28 October 2002, as a unified on-air service provided to viewers for both the Carlton and LWT franchises, running on weekdays and weekends respectively. It replaced the unique branding used by both franchisees with a unified service, offering the same service and news all week round. Legally, both franchises remained separate, but they are run by the same operating board and from the same facilities. Both licences are now held by ITV Broadcasting Ltd, but the original two companies still legally exist as Carlton Television Ltd and London Weekend Television Ltd. Each of these companies is, along with most other regional companies owned by ITV plc, listed on www.companieshouse.gov.uk as a " Dormant company". ITV London is also unique in that it supplies the network feed for the other franchises and is the sole alternative ITV region to Sky, Freesat and Virgin Media customers. This service, available on channels 973, 977 and 853 respectively, is so that audio description services, which are only carried on the London variant on these services, are readily available to all viewers. Other regional variants are available by manually searching, but London is the only region to be given an exclusive EPG slot.Studios
ITV London is based at The London Studios, on the south bank of theIdentity
The services' on-screen identity has been generic throughout its existence, and has used no on-screen branding to identify it as ITV London, with the exception of one junction after the launch of the 2003 network rebrand. Since launch, the region has seen the plain generic idents seen by the rest of the country, without any regional variance identifying it as London; the other regions at this time received a regional ident with the region name below the ITV1 logo. Any reference to the service being in London is made in the voiceover alone, or through the programme titles, such as ''London Tonight''. Some identity remained on the regional programming end boards however, as each company still produced programmes for the region: Carlton used a red and orange version of their star idents used prior to 2002 with the caption ''A Carlton Production'', with ''For London'' added for regional programming, Contains images of the Carlton Endboards. while LWT used a generic purple caption with their logo added into the background. The LWT logo was also laid out in a purple box clearly at the top, with the caption ''An LWT Production'' beneath and the Granada plc logo at the bottom. Contains images of LWT's endboards. These endboards lasted until 2 February 2004, whenProductions
ITV London itself doesn't make any programmes, as all productions were completed by external companies, Carlton, LWT or London News Network. The News and Sport for the region continued to be provided by LNN until 1 March 2004, when ITN took over production of '' London Tonight'', resulting in the move of the programme from The London Studios to ITN's headquarters at Gray's Inn Road. Other regional programmes continued to be produced for the region by the two legal franchises, Carlton and LWT, and the companies were accredited at the end of the production until 2004, when it was replaced by an ''ITV London'' caption for both companies following theSee also
* Carlton Television * London Weekend Television * ITV (TV network) * History of ITVReferences
External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Itv London